Sunday, 28 December 2008

I talked about gluttony recently. I thought I would put in images what it really means. In other words, I wanted to show instead of telling. This is a Yule log or, to be more precise, a Bûche de Noël. It is one of the many traditions my family usually follows. We have two Yule log recipes: one is made of rolled white cake with strawberry jam inside and covered with thick icing (sometimes said icing is flavoured with maple syrup). It is simple and very sugary. Then we have this one, which is made of chocolate cake, rolled around vanilla ice cream, iced with sugar and topped with hot chocolate sauce. For people with a sweet tooth, this is the ideal Christmas dessert. Sadly, both logs are finished now, so I will have to wait until we celebrate Christmas here again to eat one, or I make one myself if we visit the in-laws. I am afraid it is above my skills as a baker.

Friday, 26 December 2008

As it is probably the case for everyone, this Christmas has been for me the time for eating excesses. It has been so far anyway. I have been overindulgent from my first day back in Québec. The word I used in that entry is gluttonous. It is appropriate. The sin of gluttony is called in French gourmandise, which is not exact, as it can also describe the pleasure taken eating. Gluttony, or the French equivalent gloutonnerie is more proper, as it implies eating excessively. People might think only puritans and overzealous Christians would consider that wrong, but this is, I think, a false perception. Gluttony is still harshly condemned, but it is now devoid of religious connotation: diet books get sold fighting the sin gluttony every day. A sin is an action you take that hurts you or the others, and overindulgence is certainly sinful by this definition.

So I revel in my own little bit of gastronomical debauchery these days. Christmas is the time of turkey, stuffing, meat pies, cranberry sauce, donuts, yule logs, beers, wines and, in my particular case, peanut butter toasts. Because of this, I go to bed, wake up and spend the day slightly nauseous and tired, sometimes with a headache to boot. Yet I always end up hungry for more. I guess the Pagan spirit of Christmas was never totally erased from our minds: it is not as much a time of prayers as a time of indulgence. Still, it hurts.

Wednesday, 24 December 2008

I think it would be appropriate to have a post with a (somewhat) religious topic, as it is Christmas Eve. In my family, we are not religious people and I am leaning on atheism more often than none, but since our culture is still deeply rooted in Catholicism (for better or for worse, we cannot realy divorce from it), we put up a Nativity Scene every Christmas. It is a beautiful thing, a work of art really, with the Holy Family, shepperds, sheep, the three Wise Men who came at Epiphany, an angel, all with expressive faces, showing deep emotions for such a solemn event. This is what makes it special: the characters are iconic, but they take dramatic stances and show genuine emotions. Even the animals seem to feel the Nativity and its importance, seem to be penetrated by the event. It made me believe for years in the story that was told. My father bought the Nativity Scene years ago through a priest friend (yes, we had some at the time, this one baptised me), who imported it from Italy. That was a lot of trouble at the time, but it was worth it as we wouldn't have plastic models made in Taiwan or wherever. What we got was much better. Over the years, we have completed the Nativity Scene with various sheep figures bought all around the world (but many are santons de Charlevoix), so we have many, many sheep (and a few goats and other farm animals), in fact a complete menagerie. As it was very fragile, my father placed the scene on the mantelpiece far from the reach of his children. It is now its place and we put it there every Christmas. On Christmas night, when the fire is burning and the Nativity Scene is lit by small candles, it still has all the dramatic and emotional impact I felt years ago. The birth of Jesus is being lived, literally, over the mantelpiece.

Tuesday, 23 December 2008

I am now at my parent's place and we started decorating the Christmas tree. It is a natural one and it smells lovely in the house. So I decided to put here a picture of... well, okay, this is not this year's Christmas tree, as it is not completely finished yet. It is the one we made last year. I don't have pictures of this years's tree and it is not quite finished yet, but I am impatient to blog about it. In my family, we always have a real one. We can have it big as there is plenty of room in the conservatory. My mum thinks we are a bit extravagant with the decorations, but I just think we are in the right state of mind. Why not be extravagant, especially at Christmas? There are some decorations from everywhere we (or my parents) have been in the world. We put "glaçons" (fake ice), which disseminates the light. At the base of the tree, we do not put a Nativity Scene, as ours is easily breakable (we put it on top of the fireplace instead). In its place, we have an electric train (LGB), which goes around the tree, a train station, many sheep and other animals (also from the different places we have been around the world), various decorations and lots of fluffy fabric that serves as snow. We really do create a winter wonderland.

Stay tuned for the Nativity Scene, unless you are afraid of the Christmas overdose.

Friday, 19 December 2008

As I said in my previous entry, I am home at last. I arrived at Montreal yesterday, the journey was quite long and felt longer because of my impatience. It is beautiful here, there is a good deal of snow (not like last year, but still) and it is cold, this Quebec cold that you feel in your skin and bones. It is painful like nothing else, but it makes you feel alive. One can find happiness with minor pain if brings a reassuring feeling of familiarity.

I have been gluttonous since I got back and probably will be until I leave. I guess I can be as it is, after all the holidays. I ate at L'Anecdote last night for my first meal in Montreal (I stuffed myself with a decadent deer burger topped with smoked boar instead of bacon), I had a delicious breakfast with real bread from PremièreMoisson, peanut butter and some croissantschocolatines afterwards. At lunchtime, I had the classic bagels and smoked salmon, with the bagels from St-Viateur. I have been missing those for two years now, so that was another welcome moment. Well, what can I say, I am home all right.

Wednesday, 17 December 2008

As you probably know from my previous entry, tomorrow my wife and I are going to Montreal. I can't wait. I don't know how much I will blog there, or what exactly I will blog about, but I am fairly sure it will be of some interest, probably more than the last few weeks anyway, where I felt slightly lethargic. The expat coming home, and so on.

Monday, 15 December 2008

Anybody care for a religious song, since it's that time of the year? I am not refering to the Handel song from his oratorio (you know which one), but the immortal song from the immortal Leonard Cohen. There are at least two versions written by Cohen, but the original one is my favourite. The way Cohen mixes Biblical references with shall we say carnal themes is a stroke of genius. Many artists interpreted it, but none have the coarse voice of Cohen, which is perfect to simply state the words. This is poetry, it does not need an interpretation, just the words as they are, which have their own musicality. I got outraged when those wannabe stars at the X Factor sang Hallelujah. That was nothing short of blasphemy (Simon Cowell you filthy, worthless douchebag). As a mean of exorcism and hopefully a bit of epiphany in the meantime, I give you the original. This is pure, simple, bare beauty:

Sunday, 14 December 2008

Right now, as I said in my last post in English, I am both excited and bored. It might seem paradoxical, but it is actually very logical. I am getting very impatient to go back to Québec, therefore my current situation is boring. So I lack inspiration to do anything but prepare for Christmas, which just emphasises my feeling of pre-Christmas melancholy. And since it seems that snow has dropped everywhere in England but here, looking outside is slightly depressing. A life is always more boring when you know it will be exciting soon. Which I guess makes you appreciate the exciting moments even more so, but it does not arrange anything at the moment. I know there are ways to enjoy boredom and inaction, but still. My life has often been more about getting there than being there, more about the journey than the arrival. That said, even the journey, the non-figuratively speaking one anyway, now seems far away from me. And I know it's not rational, as it is less than a week away, but I am still feeling the blues. As I don't feel that I have much to say and yet I still want to blog to avoid schizophrenia, I am blogging. Again. I have also decided to put some pictures of my parents's back garden from last year's Christmas. It might calm a bit of the melancholy, and it might make you envious. Hopefully you will be envious soon. Or I will bore you to sleep with Christmas anecdotes. Until then, you and I have those images.

Friday, 12 December 2008

I don't have much to write about these days, as my life is pretty uneventful. I am just longing for snow, for a real winter, even though I know my people is complaining at the moment because it is falling down heavily there. Today I have been wrapping Christmas presents. Then I got a haircut, so that is one less thing to worry about. Then I bought tonight's meal at M&S. Then I had a drink of real ale at my local pub. Nothing too exciting, maybe nothing worthy to blog about, I know, but at least I am literally getting things done before we go. I still have some presents to buy, but not so many, so I think I can avoid a panic phase this year. I don't know if I am excited or bored at the moment. I am wrapping things up and I am really longing forward to spend Christmas in my wintery country ("mon pays, ce n'est pas un pays, c'est l'hiver", as we say), but in the meantime I find the waiting extremely tedious. Waiting for Christmas is in itself exciting, but these days I often find the food I eat bland, find the weather grey, the books I read and the movies/tv I watch uninteresting and overall I seem unable to focus on anything.

Okay, so I have been tagged with a meme. So I will try to reveal seven weird things about myself. There are plenty of weird things I can find about myself, just not that many I haven't blog about already. But here it goes:

1)I hate ham. I find it disgusting since I was a child. Even the name makes me feel nauseous. It is simply a vile meat. Or vile plastic. It tastes that bad.2)As a child, I wanted to become a priest. A cardinal to be more precise, because I liked the uniform and because after watching The Thorn Birds with my mum, I thought cardinals had a really, really nice life. So that's how superficial I was. It took me a while to loose faith, but since it was based on such flimsy premises, it's no wonder. Oh, and for the record, now I find The Thorn Birds ridiculous and nauseating.3)One of my ex-girlfriend has the name of my mother-in-law, and another one has the name of my mum. About the latter, my brother thought it was a proof of a profound Oedipus Complex.4)Before I got married, I used to be a night owl, reading all night, watching TV, browsing the Internet. I still do it when my wife is away and I don't have to wake up early in the morning (like last night for instance). It is something I got from my years as a university student.5)In 2006, I lost a lot of weight and I still can't figure how I managed to do it. I wanted to, as I was getting a bit (just a bit) chubby then, but I barely sacrifice the junk food, treats and beer I still eat/drink. My metabolism is a mystery to me.6)I got a work published. My thesis, really, and it is still too small to hope for an academic career any time soon. I would rather publish novels. I got some ideas, but one does not write with ideas but with words, as Mallarmé said.7)I am terribly vain. I like being called "doctor", in a way it ended up being my main motivation to do a PhD, and I feel such a pride when someone tells me I'm good at something, might it be acting, teaching, singing or whatever. And I don't take criticism very well.

And I am not going to tag anyone. It is difficult enough to get seven original things to say about yourself, then finding bloggers who will get tagged...

Sunday, 7 December 2008

It has been a year since we got in our apartment. Home sweet home, and all that. At some point, we thought about moving, but finally we decided to stay here for another year. I never felt quite right about the many places I visited when I started lookking. And, more importantly, we love this flat, we always felt comfortable in it and it is the cloest thing we ever had to a home since we got married. So it was only logical to me that we celebrate us moving in. Any reason is good enough excuse to celebrate for me. I am, after all, a man of rituals and habits.

Same time last year, I was working (yes, that feels like a long time ago, doesn't it?) for big money (even longer after typing that) and we had spent almost a month in bed and breakfasts. It took us ages to find our "home", we had seen a lot of flats and this one was the last of the bunch. It was love at first sight, we wanted it right away, even though we found it at the end of November and it was only available two weeks later. Anyway, it was nice, it was clean, it was in a quiet place, it looked and felt liveable, we wanted it, we decided to go for it. But it ended up quite difficult to get. Some documents got lost in the mail, the estate agents sent it to our previous address in another town, we had to send and receive papers twice, it took me ages to get references from my employers, those two weeks were a nightmare. That's another reason why we decided not to move: we did not want to go through the whole ordeal again. Not any time soon anyway. We felt we had suffered enough. In the end, however, we got the flat. I appreciated dearly the first night I slept here, especially since it was after a long day at work and an even longer time bleeding money for greedy bed and breakfast owners. The first night here, we ate wine and cheese, something simple that did not require any cooking and was easy to find. My provided the cheese and baguette, I provided the wine. I bought then one white wine, as she prefers it to red wine, and some mousseux (sparkling wine) in a small bottle, just for the kick. In the end, we only drank a bit of the mousseux and kept the other wine for another occasion. It was a very modest but very appreciated housewarming party. In French, we say pendre la crémaillère, which I always found appropriate.

This year, my wife was recovering from a hangover, the first in a few years (that is so not like her to have one drink too many), so I did not buy as much wine, as I knew I would have to drink it all by myself. I bought a bottle of Beaujolais nouveau, which I greatly appreciated. Especially since we bought Asda cheeses that were mostly disgusting (and, as you can see on the picture, of a sickly orange colour). We bought the cheeses for the chopping board and knife that were coming with them, but still, I had to drown the taste with wine. I also had some pâté, which was quite good, even though my vegetarian wife tried to make me feel guilty about it. But it was so much better than the cheese. So the celebration was not as solemn as I thought it would be, probably because tonight was just another Sunday, the pain and ordeal we went through to get here is now just a souvenir. Still, it was worth this modest remembrance dinner.

Saturday, 6 December 2008

This post is an English version of this one in French. So, in case you don't know, it is Saint Nicholas's Day today. He is now better known as Santa Claus, but once upon a time he was a Catholic bishop who became saint, and like any good saint he performed miracles. One of them has been transformed into the Légende de Saint Nicolas, which you can find here with an English translation below. I always loved that story, because it was such a scary one, but also because in the end, Good overcomes even the most malevolent forces. One day my (then) future niece was visiting my parents-in-law, she asked me to tell her scary stories. I told her this one, which she claimed did not scare her one bit, but the next morning she admitted to my then fiancée now wife that she had nightmares about "that butcher story". She still asked me for more scary stories as soon as I got up, which confirmed my belief that children love to be scared.

On a side note, the story was also used by Anthony Burgess in Earthly Powers.

My wife says I am a man of habits and rituals. She is absolutely right. As you probably know (you, my modest readership), I try to read and watch movies that in a way follow the seasons. It is a way like another to prioritise books and films when you have many on your shelf. It is also a good way to get into the seasonal spirit. During Halloween, this is easy enough: I read horror stories and watch horror movies. When Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat (although I eat turkey), it is trickier for me, because I don't like the marshmallow Christmas movies we are saturated with, with the silly two-bit moral and obvious consumerism. Maybe it has something to do with my Catholic past, maybe I think there is solemnity in the season that we lost, or whatever, but I prefer things that are not necessarily religious but more atmospheric. Jesus of Nazareth I consider it to be more of an Easter movie, so I watch it around that time. But here are some of the movies I watch around Christmastime:

-A Charlie Brown Christmas. Do I need to explain why? For me, it's the ultimate Christmas movie. Sweet, soft, simple, genuinely heart warming (without ever being preachy) and with great characters. The music is simply gorgeous and who can forget the classic speech of Linus about the meaning of Christmas?-On Her Majesty's Secret Service. I mentioned it before, over and over again. Yes, it's a James Bond, but it is mainly set around Christmas and the scenes in the snow are beautiful. Whatever the time, a remote hideout on a mountain covered with snow is always menacing, but when one mixes it with a time of the year when you should be celebrating instead of chasing badguys (or being chased by them), it makes everything else worksI think Christmas works beautifully as a background for crime fiction (which spy thrillers are part of). The blood on snow, the Nativity story to emphasize the death that surround the protagonists, etc. Come to think of it, the Nativity story itself has its share of sinister elements, so using Christmas as a background for more sinister stories is a logical choice. In Victorian times, ghost stories were often set during Christmastime, it was a tradition to read them at this time. In Québec and in many other places, many tales are also set during Christmas.-The Godfather and The Godfather Part II. I do watch them at other times of the year too, but simply because some of their stories are set around Christmas, I try to watch them at least once around that time. Any excuse is good to enjoy those classics.-Eyes Wide Shut. A great underrated Stanley Kubrick classic. Beautiful and haunting. I absolutely love it. Oh, and it is set during the Christmas season too.-La Guerre des Tuques. Translated in English as The Dog Who Stopped the War, which sort of gives a bit of the ending. A Québec classic, I used to love it when I was a child. The proof that children movies can also have serious themes and still be entertaining.-C.R.A.Z.Y. A "new" classic, and my favourite recent Québec movies. The story of a child (then teenager, then man) born on the 25th of December growing up in the 60s and 70s Québec.

Thursday, 4 December 2008

For those who find Christmastime stressful, or who simply can't stand the famous song, you need to read this parody by John Julius Norwich absolutely. I really mean it. Read it. Now. Enjoy. I read it for the first time in book form in a Waterstone's, I was sadly not smart enough to buy it. It pictures perfectly how Christmas can sometimes be a pain. I always wondered what somebody could have done with all those animals, I mean you can milk the cows (or get them milked for you, as the maids are the gift after all), but what about the rest? You can eat the pears of the tree and the geese's eggs of course and well, you can pluck the partridge and put it in a tourtière, but that would make my wife very angry. And I don't think I could kill a partridge anyway, especially not if it was a gift. Same goes with the rest, so I would have to endure the stupid birds and the cows, the lords, the ladies dancing, the drummers, and the rest.

Wednesday, 3 December 2008

Well, it is not snow yet, but I hope it is getting there. There was frost on the ground this morning, I took a picture which you can see on the left. Frost is beautiful, it makes everything somewhat fragile, like if nature was all of a sudden made of thin crystal. It is beautiful, but cold, unlike snow which, when it is not too wet, makes the outdoor feel warm as if it was covered with a blanket of wool. Maybe that is as much winter as I will get here, but it put me in a good mood today.

Monday, 1 December 2008

...but without the snow. That said, it is quite cold out there and inside too (during daytime at least). I guess I should be half satisfied, as half of winter is here. I do like cold weather, it makes the inside feel more comfortable. I bought an advent calendar for my wife today. Chocolate tastes better when it is cold outside too. Well, everything does. I can wrap myself in my favourite blanket, wonder how Christmas trees are grown and be patient until Christmas.

Sunday, 30 November 2008

It might be a bit early, but my wife and I did the Christmas tree today. Tomorrow might have been more appropriate technically, as it is the beginning of Advent, but today is the weekend and we had time to spend on it, so it was more practical. Some people are so obsessive that they put it on early November, so we are not so bad anyway. Sadly, we bought by mistake the one with the slim line and not the large one (mea culpa, I am the one who picked it up), but it is our first Christmas tree so I won't complain too much. She blogged about it herself. Anyway, it is nice to have a Christmas tree, even an artificial one, it puts us in a festive mood. I can't wait to smell the real Christmas tree in my parent's house though. I put some pictures here of the tree. You can see at the top right the very first Christmas decoration I bought for here, when I started my job in 2007. For some reason, I am particularly fond of it.

Now, people may wonder where I got the title of this post. It is not from me, and I understand that it is ironic to have it as a title about an artificial Christmas tree. Still, it has a good ring to it, so I decided to put it here. It is actually the title of a song in On Her Majesty's Secret Service. The song is a bit silly, but really enjoyable. In the movie, its silliness actually works to make the scene works beautifully. Because it is set mostly during Christmas time, On Her majesty's Secret Service is one of my favourite seasonal movies. I found the song on youtube (with rather poor and irrelevant images, sadly) and I put it here to kick start Christmas season:

Saturday, 29 November 2008

I don't like fruit cakes anymore. I used to, there were some nice Christmas cakes that my dad used to make that tasted quite good, and some other he used to buy from some charity organisation that was absolutely lovely (and which I used to have for breakfast sometimes), but not since I got married. If you don't know it already, English people traditionally have fruit cakes for wedding cakes. For me, fruit cakes (this sort of fruit cakes anyway, not the raisin cake I bake sometimes) were one of those many Christmas desserts, not something to have all year round. My wife doesn't like them, she never did, not even the aforementioned raisin cake that is from her grandmother's recipe. And it seemed a bit heavy and not sugary enough for my taste. That said, I am a traditionalist at heart, so again my better advice, I decided with my wife to be to go with the traditional British wedding cake, bought at Marks & Spencer at a reasonable price. The wedding was a great success, we had a wonderful wedding reception at a beautiful venue, where they served us great food, I never had such a decadent chocolate marquise in my whole life (I still miss), I sang New york, New York in front of an actual audience (well, more people than a couple of drunken friends) and everything went really beautifully. Except for that darn cake, which almost nobody ate and probably nobody enjoyed. Many did not like fruit cakes, others were allergic to nuts so didn't have any (with all the marzipan covering it, this thing can be pure poison), some were simply too full to eat it after the very filling meal (and the lovely marquise) and in the end, I got stuck with the wedding cake almost intact, after struggling with my wife to cut through it for the pictures. (For my Facebook friends, I think there are some pics of me immortalising that moment. It was like cutting through thick wood). I ate the first layer almost every morning for breakfast in the first month of the wedding, then I kept the other two in the freezer. We still have them, so I started eating it again for breakfast not so long ago. I try, I really do, I hate to waste food, especially one that has that sort of symbolical significance. But I really get almost sick when I take a bite of that dry cake covered with sickeningly thick marzipan. Horrid. I posted two pictures of it here, when it was whole and nice to look at (at least it was somehow useful) and how the middle layer looks a year later. Oh, and I put a picture of the marquise, just to have a memory of it on this blog (it was that good) and to taunt my readership.

Thursday, 27 November 2008

This morning, I took a picture of this crow up on the roof. I couldn't get a closer shot, sadly. I barely had time to take the picture before it flew away. As a kid, I didn't like crows, I thought they were quite noisy. We had lots of them any time of year. Now I really like them, partially because we had so many of them in the neighbourhood when I was a child. They are intelligent and beautiful creatures and even their croak has a certain charm. They used to have a bad reputation in ancient times, probably because they were stealing harvest, were scavengers and had that sinister shiny black colour. Even not so long ago, a crow on the roof of a house like this would have meant that one of its inhabitant was going to die soon. I like crows, but I prefer ravens, which are much bigger and much scarier. Life is not very exciting around here, things might happen next week but right now things are not happening, so I end up taking pictures of birds.

Wednesday, 26 November 2008

"I hear the mountain birdsThe sound of rivers singingA song I've often heardIt flows through me nowSo clear and so loudI stand where I amAnd forever I'm dreaming of homeI feel so alone, I'm dreaming of home

It's carried in the airThe breeze of early morningI see the land so fairMy heart opens wideThere's sadness insideI stand where I amAnd forever I'm dreaming of homeI feel so alone, I'm dreaming of home

This is no foreign skyI see no foreign lightBut far away am IFrom some peaceful landI'm longing to standA hand in my hand...forever I'm dreaming of homeI feel so alone, I'm dreaming of home"

Let's start by a bit of triviality before I get down to serious business. Tonight I will teach for the first time in a bit more than a year. It is on behalf of a language school, for one student. I feel a bit rusty, but I think I will be all right. I should be happy, but it's not exactly the kind of teaching I wanted to do, I thought when I started working in Liverpool that language schools were below my skills and that I would finally be a real, full-time lteacher. How the mighty have fallen (not that I ever was that mighty to begin with, but still).

Since inspiration hasn't quite arrived yet, since I am feeling homesick, with Christmas coming and everything, and since I forgot to put it on Remembrance Day or Remembrance Sunday, I have decided to put here I'm dreaming of home, which I discovered in the movie Merry Christmas/Joyeux Noël (a nice movie, by the way). And I just found out that Natalie Dessay sings in the movie version of the song, so that's another reason to like it. This song illustrates perfectly the longing of the expatriate like myself.

Monday, 24 November 2008

Well, I am a bit early for this, but I thought I would remind my Anglophone readership that it is St-Catherine's Day tomorrow. I will write a post about it in French tomorrow with the usual nostalgia, children souvenirs nobody wants to hear about but my brothers and I, so I won't bother you too much with childhood memories. That said, Saint Catherine's Day is a fascinating little holiday that is sadly forgotten these days. It is one month before Christmas and for Quebeckers it used to be the last big day until Christmas. It didn't start the Advent, but it was still a way to pass time until then. It was, in effect, our Thanksgiving. It was also the day of unmarried women and spinsters, as Saint Catherine is the holy patron of virgins. As a child, I didn't know much about the saint, but I knew that "coiffer Sainte Catherine" meant, for unmarried women of 25, becoming "vieille fille", i.e. a spinster. As a child, 25 seemed very old to me, and I wouldn't understand why any man in his right mind would want to marry a woman so ancient anyway, so the tradition made sense. Obviously, I didn't know I was going to marry at 30 a woman aged 26 going on 27. In France, they had Saint-Catherine's hats or wigs to celebrate the event. In Québec, we used to make tire, which is taffy,"like Marguerite Bourgeoys" now a saint herself), who introduced taffy in America and evangelised natives by bribing them with the candy (the way we were told her story, that's how I understood it). So that's what I loved about Saint-Catherine's Day: the taffies, which we used to cool on snow, when there was some. Funny that a day so austere was also for us another day of sugar indulgence. But the holiday served also as a warning for the girls who were too eager to get a husband. We were told the cautionary tale of Colette, a maid approaching 25 who did not want to become a spinster, and who tried too hard to get married before Saint Catherine's Day. If you can understand French, you can read her story here. It's a beautiful conte québécois the way I love them: simple, dark, with no happy ending.

I didn't know how to commemorate the day, and then I found recently at total random this song by the McGarrigle sisters, which is called Complainte pour Sainte-Catherine. Granted, it is more about the rue Sainte-Catherine in Montreal, not the day or the saint herself, but the "pour" in the title means that the song is addressed to the saint, so I took it as a sign. Anyway, I don't know if it is the thick Quebec anglophone accent, the use of joual, the way the lyrics picture perfectly a cold winter day in Montreal, but I found the song irresistible.

Today is the day I met my wife, six years ago. It was a Saturday evening, I was eating a mince pie in the residence's kitchen and she showed up because she was looking for a friend (my neighbour, a Greek girl from Cyprus I will always feel guilty not to thank in public in my wedding speech). I might blog more about that evening one day, something that hopefully will be an outstanding post. For now, suffice to say that since that day, I try to have a mince pie on the 23rd. I am not the biggest mince pies fan, in fact I quickly get bored of them, but it is one of those little traditions I have and I am quite fond of it. It is important to commemorate such events, and it makes the end of November more exciting, or at least exciting for something else than Christmas lights and decorations they already put everywhere. This is a personal, little celebration of mine that needs nothing but a mince pie.

Holly's blog entry reminded me that today is the day of Kennedy's assassination (and I have a good excuse for forgetting, as you will see tomorrow). For people of my age, itt was the 9/11 of our parents's generation. A lot of people of my age have known the story through Oliver Stone's movie, which I never liked. I much prefer the James Ellroy version of the murder, that he related in American Tabloid andThe Cold Six Thousand. Just as fictitious as Oliver Stone's paranoid fantasy, but to my taste much more believable.

On a side note, you can find here a fascinating website about Kennedy and his murder, which I visit from time to time around the 22nd of November.

I wonder... I saw it in one of the front yard's tree yesterday, and while there is no sign of a bird around there and the branch doesn't strike me as the ideal place to build a nest, as it is exposed to the weather and potential predators, it sure looks like a nest. Maybe it is just a bunch of twigs that got there by the wind, but I think it is more likely an empty nest. So sadly, I will not see birds any time soon in it, but the nest in itself still looks quite nice. Interesting how the natural world can be so aesthetic, even it its smallest incarnations, like this nest or a spider web.

Friday, 21 November 2008

It is quite windy today, you can sometimes hear the wind shaking the windows slightly. I love the kind of day we are having right now: it is sunny, cold and windy. I remember when I was working in Liverpool, a few days after I got back from the Christmas holidays, we had a few days/weeks where the weather was terrible, with lots of rain and lots of wind. I had my head down marking grammar exams and the windows of my office were shaking as if the end of the world was on its way. It felt great. So was sleeping in my bedroom in the old Victorian house I was living in. When the weather outside is unfriendly, you appreciate more the comfort of your home.

I can feel the wind more in this attic flat. Whatever the weather is, we are in much closer proximity with it. It is something else I love about attic rooms: it makes you more in touch with the outside word, in direct contact with nature's temper. I don't know if it is because we are higher up, or because of the angles of an attic, but attics have that property. Or maybe I just have a wild imagination.

Wednesday, 19 November 2008

Since November, I feel like I have no worthy topic to blog about. Well, I do, but I feel either uninspired to blog about them, or I am waiting for a more appropriate moment. There is just something about this month I guess. Not that it is in my case completely uneventful: my wife's birthday is in November and there are some unknown yet interesting holidays, which I am going to talk about in due time, or already did. But on the whole, November is stuck between Halloween and Christmas, so it is a month of waiting time and expectations. Autumn is no more in full force, but it's not quite winter yet. I don't like the monotonous, in between nature of November. If only there was snow...

Ah! There's another thing: I miss the snow. Snow makes everything look more serene and warm (ironically enough). I have been longing for the snows of yesteryear since we got snow here as early as October. They had snow in Québec a few days before, so I was hoping for some real drops In November, then I remembered that I was living in England. You might think that I am digressing, talking about snow in a blog that started being about inspiration, but you see, this is actually structured (okay, not necessarily well structured, but the connection makes sense). If you understand a bit of French, you will know that I mentioned in some of my previous posts the great poet François Villon. Villon made one of his most famous poems (which I often quote from) longing for snow and for past glories. He was inspired by this absence. It told me that one does not have to have an exciting life to create. Creation can also come from monotony, from longing. I am no François Villon, but I am looking up to my favourite poet by longing for a time that will come and that I have seen before, hoping for it as I have known it in my childhood in Northern Québec and I have been giving an foretaste of it this year. Through melancholy, I hope to get a stroke of genius, or at least some kind of interesting writing. Not an epiphany, as I got all of them in teenage, but something good. I don't know which one will come first, the snow or inspiration, but I am expecting them. In the meantime, I'll put some pictures here that my dad took in Chicoutimi in...April 2008. It looked like December, as you can see.

Saturday, 15 November 2008

Since I haven't written a food entry for a while and since it's November and therefore utterly uneventful, I might as well do it now, with pictures if you please. My mother-in-law often says that I have a sweet tooth, which I never completely agreed with. I am not too keen on sugary snacks between meals and I always prefer to eat something savoury before something sweet. That said, I sometimes get sugar craving. I usually try to satisfy it with some sort of chocolate dessert or other. My favourite is the chocolate mousse, which is for me the quintessential dessert: simple, rich, delicious and utterly satisfying. This is what I had yesterday, a little cup of chocolate mousse from Waitrose. Tonight I had again a sugar craving (must be the gray weather), but I fixed with a trifle from Waitrose. It is not as satisfying, trifles in England seem to be of the lighter kind (this is at least the feeling I had eating the Waitrose one). I had my first experience of trifle in the Binerie Mont-Royal, a "restaurant" (more a snack bar really) of traditional Québec cuisine, very famous in Montreal. (Just a little note, if you go to Montreal, have at least one meal at the Binerie, it is simple, honest food, quite cheap and the staff is so friendly you'll feel like you are family, which you probably are in their eyes. The owner always called me "jeune homme" when I was going there.) A trifle is called bagatelle in Québec and is made of leftovers from other desserts. The one from the Binerie was primitive in its look, filling, a pure declaration of war on waistline, nothing like the somewhat aseptised, fancy version that Waitrose's trifle. I think it is the kind of dessert one really needs: uncompromisingly sugary. Anyway, that's the kind of sugar fix I usually need.

Friday, 14 November 2008

I thought I'd put another Bond song here. As you know, I love Casino Royale. I was not the biggest fan of Chris Cornell's You Know My Name when it got released, but I grew to love it. You can find the original videoclip here. That said, I find the song particularly efficient in the movie itself. The title sequence of Casino Royale is brilliant as the animation is an narrative in itself. Here it is for you to enjoy:

Thursday, 13 November 2008

The temperature is grey these days, I mean really worthy of November, I get bored easily after a day looking for jobs and just looking at the window puts you off going out. So I try to enjoy myself as much as I can. Not much is needed to be happy, really, if you think about it and have a bit of good will. It is achieved by mixing pleasure and comfort, both things that can be easily found. When the weather is miserable, like today, I just need and a good book (here on this picture Little Wilson and Big God, although I am not reading it at the moment) and to wrap myself in the blanket I bought at Marks&Spencer in Liverpool, which is not only one of the most comfortable blankets I ever had, but also has a sentimental value to me. As I doubt you can see it very well on the picture at your left, I think you can find it here (but as far as I remember I had to pay more for it). The content of the book matters (there is nothing more frustrating than reading a bad novel and feeling forced to go through it because you started it), but the circumstances of reading are almost as important. Some people enjoy reading in a café, I prefer to be at home and feel warm, dry and hear the weather roaring from outside.